MAM
Shashank Gupta joins HT Digital Streams as regional manager, branded content, west
The brand solutions specialist swaps Times Internet’s Gurugram desk for a regional manager’s chair at Hindustan Times Digital Streams, taking charge of branded content across the western market
MUMBAI: Another mover from the crowded Times Internet stable has found a new home. Shashank Gupta has joined HT Digital Streams as regional manager, branded content, west, based in Mumbai, a role he began in September 2026. It marks a shift in geography as much as employer, taking Gupta from the north-heavy Gurugram media corridor into the commercial engine room of Mumbai, and a step up in scope from sales execution to regional content strategy.
Gupta’s most recent employer, Times Internet, occupied nearly four years of his career and offers a tidy case study in steady, sales-led progression. He joined as brand solutions and sales manager for the Times of India in November 2022, was promoted to senior manager, brand solutions and sales, in August 2025, and held that post until his exit this September. It was a role built on revenue delivery rather than title inflation, the kind of grind that tends to produce operators who actually know how to close.
Before Times Internet, Gupta spent just over a year at Zee Entertainment Enterprises as manager, sales, brand solutions, based in Noida, sandwiched between a year and nine months at Star TV Network as senior executive, brand solutions, in Gurugram. His career proper began at GroupM, where he worked as assistant business manager for nearly two years from May 2018, handling key accounts including Google and Maruti during an earlier stint at Kinetic Worldwide, where he interned in client services and strategy in 2017. Notably, Gupta’s path into media was not a straight line, he spent a year and eight months as an SAP BI consultant at L&T Infotech between 2014 and 2016, before pivoting entirely into advertising and brand solutions.
That blend, a technical first act followed by a decade-long climb through some of India’s biggest broadcast and digital sales floors, Star, Zee, Times Internet, gives Gupta a working knowledge of both the commercial and analytical sides of media that ought to translate well into branded content, a discipline that increasingly rewards people who can read data as fluently as they can pitch a client. HT Digital Streams will be hoping the west desk benefits from exactly that combination.
